Scientifically Speaking: Does ChatGPT really make us stupid?

Hindustan Times

a day ago

A few months after I took apart articles that mischaracterised a study of AI tools as causing people to lose critical thinking skills in a column for HT, viral headlines are at it again.
A number of headlines have been screaming that using artificial intelligence (AI) rots our brains. Some said it outright, others preferred the more polite 'cognitive decline', but they meant almost the same thing. Add this to the growing list of things AI is blamed for: making us lazy, dumber, and incapable of independent thought.
If you read only those headlines, you couldn't be blamed for thinking that most of humanity was capable of exalted reasoning before large language models turned our brains to pulp. If we're worried about AI making us stupid, what's our excuse for the pre-AI era?
Large language models like ChatGPT and Claude are now pervasive. But even a few years into their use, a lot of the talk about them remains black and white. In one camp, the techno-optimists tell us that AI super intelligence, which can do everything better than all of us, is just around the corner. In the other, there's a group that blames just about everything that goes wrong anywhere on AI. If only the truth were that simple.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study that sparked this panic deserves a sober hearing, not hysteria. Researchers at the Media Lab asked a worthwhile question. How does using AI to write affect our brain activity?
But answering that is harder than it looks.
The researchers recruited 54 Boston-area university students, divided them into three groups, and each wrote 20-minute essays on philosophical topics while monitoring their brain activity with EEG sensors. One group used ChatGPT, another used Google Search, and a third used only their brains.
Over four months, participants tackled questions like 'Does true loyalty require unconditional support?'
What the researchers claim is that ChatGPT users showed less brain activity during the task, struggled to recall what they'd written, and felt less ownership of their work. They call this 'cognitive debt.' The conclusion sounds familiar. Outsourcing thinking weakens engagement. Writing is hard. Writing philosophical essays on abstract topics is harder.
It's valuable work, and going through the nearly 200 pages of the paper takes time. The authors note that their findings aren't peer-reviewed and come with significant limitations. I wonder how many headline writers bothered to read past the summary.
Because the limitations are notable. The study involved 54 students from elite universities, writing brief philosophy essays. Brain activity was measured using EEGs, which is less sensitive and more ambiguous than brain scans using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging).
If AI really damages how we think, then what participants did between sessions matters. Over four months, were the 'brain-only' participants really avoiding ChatGPT for all their coursework? With hundreds of millions using ChatGPT weekly, that seems unlikely. You'd want to compare people who never used AI to those who used it regularly before drawing strong conclusions about brain rot.
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And here's the problem with stretching a small study on writing philosophical college-level essays too far. While journalists were busy writing sensational headlines about 'brain rot,' they missed the bigger picture. Most of us are using ChatGPT to avoid thinking about things we'd rather not think about anyway.
Later this month, I'm travelling to Vietnam. I could spend hours sorting out my travel documents, emailing hotels about pickups and tours, and coordinating logistics. Instead, I'll use AI to draft those communications, check them, and move on. One day maybe my AI agent will talk to their AI agent and spare us both, but we're not there yet.
In this case, using AI doesn't make me stupid. It makes me efficient. It frees up mental energy and time for things I actually want to focus on, like writing this column.
This is the key point, and one I think that got lost. Learning can't be outsourced to AI. It still has to be done the hard way. But collectively and individually we do get to choose what's worth learning.
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When I use GPS instead of memorizing routes, maybe my spatial memory dulls a bit, but I still get where I'm going. When I use a calculator, my arithmetic gets rusty, but that doesn't mean I don't understand math. If anyone wants to train their brain like a London cabbie or Shakuntala Devi, they can. But most of us prefer to save the effort.
Our goal isn't to use our brains for everything. It's to use them for the things that matter to us.
I write my own columns because I enjoy the process and feel I have something to say. When I stop feeling that way, I'll stop. But I'm happy to let AI handle my travel logistics, routine correspondence, and other mental busywork.
Rather than fearing this transition, we might ask: What uniquely human activities will we choose to pursue with the time and mental energy AI frees up?
We're still in the early days of understanding AI's cognitive impacts. Some promise AI will make us all geniuses; others warn it will turn our brains to mush. The verdict isn't in, despite what absolutists on both sides claim.
Anirban Mahapatra is a scientist and author, most recently of the popular science book, When The Drugs Don't Work: The Hidden Pandemic That Could End Medicine. The views expressed are personal.